A railway looks like the most rigid thing in the landscape: steel lines running dead straight to the horizon, apparently welded to the earth. The reality underneath is the opposite,…
The round cover is a famous interview question with a famous answer, and the famous answer is correct but incomplete. Roundness solves one problem extremely well. The lid is solving…
The shape is the instrument reading. Here are seventeen.
1. The Fluffy White Heap With a Flat Base
Cumulus forms where warm ground heats a bubble of air until it…
A hole in a wall that has to behave like a wall. Here are fifteen compromises.
1. It Is a Deliberate Weak Point
A wall is there to keep weather,…
Some dishes improve and some collapse, and which is which is predictable. Here are fifteen things going on.
1. Flavour Compounds Keep Moving After the Heat Is Off
Soluble aromatic…
Nobody thinks of them as equipment, which is what they are. Here are eleven jobs.
1. Trapping a Layer of Still Air
Most of the insulating effect is not the…